"I've heard a lot around me that it's too difficult to read poetry. Poets are not allowed to write only poems. One book a day, one day it can be a diary, and one day it can be a novel. Like a magazine, I intend to introduce the writings of poets that anyone can read lightly and easily."
This is the background of the "Proper Project of Poetry" newly launched this month by Kim Min-jung (47), a poet who debuted in 1999 and editor of the publishing company Nanda with more than 20 years of experience. The year-round timely project is a series of books in which 12 poets each take charge of one month from January to December and publish one book every month throughout the year in relay. Each book is a compilation of poems, novels, essays, interviews, etc. written by the poet one day a day from the 1st to the end of each month, regardless of form.
CEO Kim, who was in charge of the overall planning of the timely project and the January book, released his first book, "Reading, Street: January of Kim Min-jung" on the 1st of this month, the first day of the new year. He met at a book cafe in Yeouido, Seoul, on the 3rd, and his eyes sparkled like an innocent child, as if he was excited by a new attempt that had never been made before. CEO Kim said, "The timely series can be said to be a 'seasonal book' containing timely poems that fit each season and period like seasonal food," and added, "If you read one book every day and one book every month for 12 months, the year will be filled with 365 stories."
Participating poets recruited writers suitable for each month after studying their works directly for poets who can write various writings by CEO Kim. CEO Kim said, "I thought it would be nice to look into the poet's day instead of a difficult poem," adding, "The book in March, which announces a fresh spring, will be decorated by poet Shin Yi-in, a new writer who debuted in 2021, and the book in July will be decorated by poet Hwang In-chan, who has a pretty summer-like poem." He explained that January, a cold midwinter, and February, ahead of a hopeful spring, feel a little different even in the same winter. "Poet Jeon Wook-jin, who feels like February in the work, took charge of the book in February," CEO Kim said. "I'm looking forward to the recent manuscript because it includes fairy tales."
The previously published January book contained 31 articles by CEO Kim from January 1 to January 31. While I was busy as an editor for the past five to six years, I solved the stories that were only in my diary every day one by one. It is mainly about the people around him. For example, the Jan. 9 episode "Sometimes Early Spring Must Be So Incoming" begins with the story of one day when Yukyung Seo, a junior at a publishing company in his late 30s, suddenly fell into cardiac arrest. "I'm coming to you alive, and you're going to die. Where did you go?" January 9 is Seo's birthday.
The length of a piece of writing is not that long. There are also many articles that end with two or three pages of books. It also contains a letter from poet Heo Soo-kyung, her best friend, on January 16, 1999, the day she bought Choi Seung-ja's prose collection "The Story of a Lazy Poet" in Daehan Seorim, Incheon, a congratulatory poem she read at the wedding of writer Lee Seul-ah and poet Lee Hu-un, an interview with the late comedian Park Ji-sun, who watched a movie and chatted with her at CGV Yongsan, Seoul, on January 3, 2018, and a dream of a day when the late literary critic Hwang Hyun-san appeared.
Nine episodes of the series "Anywhere at Any Time" were also published in this book. Women who can't pray, women who are dragon bands, falling chairs, rolling bandages.... It is a poem that started from things that suddenly came to him at an unspecified time and place in everyday life. CEO Kim said, "At some point, a series of poems was written with a similar feeling to catching a mole that pops out of a mole game with a toy hammer. I caught poems that appeared "bbong" in my daily life then."
CEO Kim "discovered" instead of writing poems like this when his father suddenly collapsed in a cerebral infarction in 2019. Fortunately, he was over the edge of death, but the aftereffects of the time prevented his father from covering up or speaking properly. I wanted to somehow keep my father, who was gradually disappearing. From then on, Kim began to keep all of his father's words and writings as records. I always put the recorder next to my father, and I put a pen in my hand.
CEO Kim said, "There were many poems in the words of my father, who became a baby because he was sick. They were pure and poetic words that even I, a poet, could never express even if I died or woke up, he said. "The poetry in me seemed to wake up again, and I think I felt grateful for the poems I found every day." In the Jan. 28 episode, he compiled notes of transcripts of daily conversations with his father and New Year's cards written by his father. CEO Kim said he will not let every precious word of the people around him go by now.
The goal of the timely project is to get more people to read. "These days, there are so many things to see that it's so hard to read a book," CEO Kim said, adding, "The book can't fight the world on the phone, but I think we need to keep thinking about how to coexist." He laughed, saying, "It would be great if people could just look at this book as it is shorter than a newspaper in the bathroom, so it would be great if they could just look at it like that."
